One last thread
by RukiaGallega
Summary: Translation. Day in day out, surrounded by death, he could feel how madness slowly took over his mind, until the last thread which bound him to sanity broke.


A.N: I translated this story for the Undertaker fanclub at .net and I finally decided to publish it here. My English isn't the best so if there is any mistake please tell me. The original version in Spanish can be found on my profile. Hope you like it :)

**One last thread**

Day in day out, always the same.

Day in day out, following the list, running around reaping souls. Young and old, men and women. Accidental or natural deaths, murders or suicides. Day in day out.

At first he had seen the cinematic records with interest, wondering what had caused the end of that life, but as time passed the images faded in repetitive scenes of very similar moments, and at the same time so different that it was impossible to remember them all. Happiness and sadness, love and hatred, wealth and poverty. They splashed the memories of every human soul, a pattern always kept and always changing.

He did his job well. Indifferent, distant and cold, he collected the souls he had to in the time assigned. He got the praises of his bosses and the admiration of his workmates. And however...

He couldn't tell when it started. That feeling seeping slowly inside him, a soft poison whispering in the back of his mind. One good day he realized what he was thinking, the sinister thoughts his mind made; and sincerely, he was scared. That was against the very nature of the Death, against the most sacred laws of the shinigami. He decided to keep those thoughts locked in the darkest corner of his brain, and never again let them come out, but it wasn't so easy. At the days he had more work, when he covered exhausted a battlefield, an inundated town or a burnt-out village (corpses scattered at his feet everywhere, cries of pain and distress filling the air, the smell of death soaking his clothes so much so that he didn't feel it since long ago), he couldn't help but lower his guard and those thoughts, that poison corrupted his soul and mind, slowly, very slowly.

Year after year he resisted the unavoidable, but soon he realized that if he went on that way he would end up losing the little sanity he had left, and he decided to leave. To desert from that endless circle of monotony and death and leave everything, everything behind.

He hid himself at a funeral parlour, forgotten in a lost corner of London. He had taken away its owner's soul almost a decade before, an old man who had buried with his own hands his parents, wife and children, and died alone in a cold winter night. Dust and cobwebs had taken over the place, the wall's paint was chipped, the ceiling full of cracks and dampness looked like it was going to fall at any time. At the back, almost hidden in the half-light, a faded desk's outline could be seen, some chairs eaten away by termites and a bookcase full of records which surely would become dust once somebody touched them. Death and time could be felt in the air, a heavy shroud clinging his chest and making difficult to breathe, a coffin's lid being closed over him.

And however, he never did something about it. To open the windows, clean the floors and furniture, fix the ceiling, paint the walls... A bit of care and that grave's anteroom would have looked even comfortable. But the atmosphere of neglect and ruin was too fitting, too similar to his own soul, and he didn't feel the will to cover with a layer of fake stability what actually was about to fall down.

Working with his hands did him a lot of good. To measure the wood precisely to make the parts fit perfectly, sand it down again and again until it was well polished, varnish the ensemble in a sober shade... The effort left him wonderfully exhausted and, for the first time in a very long time, he could sleep well.

He even started to find pleasant to deal with his guests. In the past he had merely gather the souls, without paying attention to the body they left behind, but now this one had become the focus of his attention. He sewed the ripped flesh of those who had had a violent death, he returned them the humanity torn by force, the colour of the lost blood, the peaceful expression to those faces twisted in pain and agony.

But as years slowly went on his mind started to trick him again. Alone with a new guest, sometimes he caught himself looking the corpse and wondering: "What would happen if...?"

He tried, he really tried to get those thoughts out of his mind, but they came again and again, and once more he felt the poison of madness taking over his mind, gradually but never stopping.

And when he held Claudia's lifeless body in his arms, his own blood dripping over that face he loved so much, he could feel it. He could feel the last thread which bound him to sanity break.


End file.
